


Natural Selection

by Frea_O



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Apocalypse, Biblical References, Boxing & Fisticuffs, Computer Programming, F/F, Gen, Physical Disability, Pre-Femslash, Religious Fanaticism, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2835809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Fly low. I’ve got them, you take out that guy on the roof.”</p><p>“Better plan: I drop you, fly to Tahiti, and enjoy daiquiris on the beach while you stay here and suffer for dragging me into this.”</p><p>The last thing she expected was for the blonde clutching onto her armor to start laughing.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Now with a bonus alternate ending!</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alliterate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliterate/gifts).



> Hi, Alliterate! Um, you said superheroes and Clarke/Raven, and apparently that was all my brain needed in order to lose all connection to reality and write 8k of superhero/canon fusion as a treat. There's not too much identity porn because I couldn't figure out how to make costumed heroes work, but I loved the idea of Raven interfacing with technology and Clarke being a speedster, I ran (ha!) with that. Only three characters are tagged, but others are mentioned liberally. Happy Yuletide!

Raven spotted the blonde between the second and third bouts and thought, _she should never try to be subtle._

It wasn’t the hair, though among the Factory crowd, most of whom were covered in dirt and grease and excitement, the golden hair did make the woman stand out like a sore thumb. It was the gaze: assessing and frank, focused alternatively between the match in the ring and on Raven herself. Raven didn’t cherish the sensation much. You didn’t want to draw much attention in the Factory, even if you had an exo on fight night. Raven told herself she was imagining things and focused on Wick, who was emceeing all of the matches when he remembered to stop smirking at her and do his damned job. She kept the blonde in the corner of her eye as a precaution, but the fights were her priority.

Mama needed a new compressor.

Overhead, lamps flickered while on the stamped metal floors, the Factory workers jumped and shouted, cheering on their intended fighter. Metal fists against the exoskeleton armor rang through the air. Anticipation and greed left a tangible stench in the air.

“And finally, our new challenger,” Wick said, shouting into the old-fashioned microphone that dangled from the ceiling, “all the way from Edgar Allen Oh-No, it’s the one and only Raven!”

Raven didn’t bother to roll her eyes at him as she parted the ropes and stepped into the ring. Around her, her armor clicked and hummed, adjusting seamlessly to her movements. The evening’s current champion rested in the corner opposite, the shield-mask of his exo lifted so she could see the sweaty face underneath. She’d watched Samson fight a few times—he had a flimsy disaster for a right hook and several weak stress points in his armor—so she was fairly confident she didn’t have anything to worry about. Samson’s exoskeleton was the largest in Ark City, dwarfing Raven’s by a good couple of feet. He had completed the aesthetic by painting a topless pin-up girl on the biceps. The blonde hair seemed to sneer at Raven as she rolled her shoulders, settling into the comfortable second skin of her exoskeleton. It made her think of the mystery blonde in the back of the crowd.

When Raven looked that way, the space was suddenly empty.

 _Huh_ , Raven thought, locking her shoulder shield into place. She could’ve sworn the woman was just there. Not her problem, she decided, and she gave Wick a less than thrilled look as Samson rose to his feet.

“How long have you been sitting on that one?” she asked.

Wick’s grin only broadened. “Were you not blown away?”

“You’re not far off. It certainly blew.”

“Such a charmer.” Wick grabbed the microphone and spoke into it. “Laaaadies and germs! Tonight at the Factory, we’re giving you your money’s worth! Samson—the undefeated champion of the night—” The crowd let out a raucous cheer as Samson raised both gigantic arms over his head. “—versus the underdog Raven, whose wit is the only thing sharper than her right cross—” Assembled laughter. “—in a head-to-head bout! Get your bets in now, folks. It’s gonna be a doozy.”

“You really suck at this,” Raven said, and Wick made kissy noises at her, which made her laugh despite herself. 

In the tradition of all exo fights, Raven dropped her facemask and saluted to show that she had operated in good faith. She finally breathed a deep breath. She was now cocooned by her exoskeleton, nestled deep into the mechanical fighting suit. Everything felt _better_ that way. Adrenaline broke through the brief second of comfort, spiking as she tapped her gloves to Samson’s and backed off the requisite distance.

When the bell rang, Samson swung first. The blow didn’t connect; Raven twisted, ears drinking in the familiar _whir_ of the revolute joints as her armor responded. The crowd jeered at the missed hit—they wanted carnage, and they wanted Samson to have it. “Too slow, old man,” Raven said, ducking a follow-up punch and jabbing back at half-power. The punch was supposed to look timid to watching crowds, and the boos in response confirmed that.

It only made Raven smile as the diagnostics screen, visible to even those outside of the exo, continued to spit readouts that she ignored.

The powerless hit seemed to bolster Samson’s overconfidence. He led off with a three-combo attack, designed to knock her out early. Raven let the second hit land, though she staggered away before the uppercut could finish her. A tiny thought toward the screen made it flash red as she made sure to visibly favor her left side.

He wasn’t even making this difficult for her.

Samson might be bigger, but she was faster. When he surged forward, intending to incapacitate the right side of her armor, Raven darted under his arm. She jabbed twice at a weak joint and danced back. Samson stumbled. Clapping and cheering faltered; Samson straightened, and, with an amplified roar, bore down on Raven, aiming for her face-shield. In a lucky strike, he clipped the edge of the shield, sending sparks across Raven’s vision. 

She grunted and diverted power to her legs so she could deliver a swift knee Samson’s groin. He staggered back and she shifted the power back to its origin before anybody running a scanner could see the fluctuation. You didn’t get many scanners in an arena the size of the Factory, but better safe than sorry. Samson could absolutely not get lucky like that again, she determined, and went back into the fight with a renewed burst of energy.

Three rounds later, she stood over Samson’s inert form, sweat soaking through the fabric of her under-armor, and collected her prize winnings.

“Could’ve at least provided a challenge,” she as she pulled up her face-shield.

“Not gonna stick around for double-or-nothing?” Wick asked.

“Got what I need. See you next week.” Raven tucked the credit slip into the front of her exo. “I recommend working on your intro in the meantime.”

Wick only gave her an insufferable smirk and trotted back to gather a couple more exo fighters. It was impossible to truly insult the man, which was probably why they had such a good friendship.

As for Raven, she stepped to the back of the room, away from the greasers trying to place their bets for the next fight. Her exoskeleton had been designed with only her in mind, which meant she didn’t need a second to assist her in getting in and out of the suit. The armored suit was an engineering marvel; when Raven had finally broken it down to all of the pieces, it fit into a wheeled duffle that was difficult to lift without the welder’s carapace she wore beneath it. Luckily, in this part of town, nobody would look twice at a welder heading home from work.

As she left, Raven trailed her hand over the wall, rubbing oil streaks over her face and upper chest to complete the look for the short walk back to her apartment. If one could really call it that. It was more of a lab or a garage, and it always had been. She had a cot shoved into a corner, though more often than not, she fell asleep at her computer station, lulled to sleep by the hum of the processor units. The place was always freezing in the winter and hot in summer, but extreme temperatures didn’t bother her these days. And the best part was that the neighbors knew not to ask questions when something exploded, not so long as Raven kept all of their transport units running in top shape. She let herself in, frowning at a sudden gust of wind right as she opened the door, and immediately crossed to the charging system for her exoskeleton.

Which was precisely when she saw the blonde again.

Sitting at the island bar where Raven piled up the takeout containers.

Like she’d been there for hours.

“Aah!” Raven snatched up the nearest thing at hand—a wrench—and held it up like a baseball bat. “Where the _hell_ did you come from!”

“Hi,” the blonde said. “Please put the wrench down.”

“Who are you? How did you get in here?”

“I’ll be happy to answer any and all of your questions as soon as you drop the wrench.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid that if anything, that’s going to be over my dead body.” Raven tightened her grip. “You were at the fights, and you’re here now. Why are you following me? What do you want?”

“You’re not going to drop the wrench, are you?”

“Not until you get the hell out of—” Raven blinked and suddenly she wasn’t holding the wrench anymore. Her fingers were empty.

The blonde reclining on the stool easily twirled the wrench. It didn’t look like she had moved at all, save she was now holding the tool. And in that instant, Raven understood everything.

“—here,” Raven said, and immediately dropped her arms to the side. “You’re a Natural.”

“Clarke Griffin,” the blonde said, nodding. “You’re fast.”

“Not as fast as you, apparently.” A Natural. Didn’t it just figure? There’d been something _off_ about the woman at the fight, but Raven had just figured she was a weirdo. But a Natural? On her home turf? That was entirely different kettle of piranhas. “How’s a Natural get this far into this part of town without being noticed?”

“I should ask you the same.”

Though Raven felt her stomach clench, she’d been playing poker with the boys after her shifts for too long to let even so much as a flicker of panic cross her face. Instead, she scoffed. “Me, a Natural? What kind of opiates have they been feeding you down at the station or wherever it is they rounded you freaks up to?”

Clarke’s serious expression never shifted, though it almost seemed like she was disappointed. “I’m gonna guess you can communicate with tech, and your exo’s not your average fighting armor.”

“This exo?” Raven set it down by the charging station and pulled it free of the bag. In the dim light from her shop, the scuffed and battered armor looked even more pathetic. “The one they scan before every fight?”

“They do that, don’t they?” Clarke reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, holding it up for Raven to see. The temperature dropped a couple of degrees as the footage played: it had been taken earlier, from a high angle—the balcony level on the Factory—and it showed Raven’s exo being scanned at the docking station by the door. “This scanner, right here, in fact. The one you had your hand on the whole time the scan was being completed.”

Raven connected the power node. “Doesn’t mean I messed with the machine.” Of course she had, though. How else was she going to get the mods into the fight? She needed the money, and it wasn’t like others didn’t cheat, too. She was just _better_ at it.

“It’s really impressive.” Clarke turned the phone so she could look at the video, at Raven grinning and punching one of her mechanic friends in the arm. The fighting chit—the one still in Raven’s left coverall pocket—flashed green as Raven took it from the scanner in the video. “Those machines are designed to keep out cheaters.”

“And they’re really good at what they do.” In theory. Raven strolled to her fridge and grabbed a can of pop. She didn’t offer Clarke one; instead, she walked on, climbing the spiral staircase to the second level of her lab. She felt a gust of wind on the fifth step and wasn’t surprised to see the other woman sitting on one of the saw-horses at the top of the stairs, legs swinging idly. “What do you want, anyway? What’s it matter to you if I’m a Natural or not?”

“There’s only a hundred and one of us left,” Clarke said, and the disappointment had shifted to a heavy sadness. “You’re the first one we’ve found.”

“I got to where I am with my brain, and nothing else.” Raven took a long swig of pop and set the can down so she could remove the welder’s carapace. “I don’t need bullshit superpowers.”

The last thing she expected was for the blonde to smile. “Getting them must have pissed you off even more than it did for Bellamy. What happened? Hit your head, woke up able to talk to computers?”

She’d fallen through a hole in the floor her worthless mother hadn’t bothered to call the landlord about, or so they told her. Raven had no memory of any of it. She’d simply been plagued with the sensation of waking up to an intense _awareness_ of every piece of technology around her. It was like she’d had cotton stuffed into her ears and coating her mind for her entire life, and it was finally removed and she could _understand_. The beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor was no longer a noise to be forgotten in the background, but a vital burst of color and logic in her head. Cell phones were tiny islands of the same color and logic, and computers, computers were where she belonged.

Of course, it hadn’t been that simple. The fall should have killed her. In fact, the three pieces of metal lodged into her back _had_ killed a part of her: she would wear the brace on her left leg, the one she had deliberately designed her exoskeletons around, for the rest of her life.

“I don’t talk to computers,” Raven said, turning away. She picked up a screwdriver, but only to drop it into her toolbox. “I thought all of you Natural freaks were stuck in a lab somewhere.”

Like Finn, before the notice came.

“We escaped,” Clarke said, her voice absolutely dry in a way that meant there was definitely a story there.

“So now you’re just, what, a blight on society?” Raven continued to sort through her tools, though she really didn’t know what she was doing.

The shoulders of Clarke’s blue jacket lifted a half-inch. “We’ve been looking for more people like us. More Naturals. And we were about to give up when we found you.”

Raven looked up from the tools. “Why?” she asked.

“Because we need your help. We’re in trouble and nobody else can do what you do.”

“Obviously.” Raven laughed as she flipped a screwdriver over. She balanced it on her finger by the tip. “That goes without saying. I’m the best. But I’m also not a Natural, so you can just toddle along, Speedy Gonzalez. Make sure you lock the door on the way out.”

Clarke swung her legs, bouncing her heels against the bottom rung of the stool. “Lie all you want about what you can do, but you should know you’re not safe. If we figured out your secret, others are probably already on their way. And they’re not nearly as nice as me.”

Raven fumbled the screwdriver as the old panic swarmed up, sharp and stinging. She caught the tool, tucking it into the side of her belt as she slammed the lid back down on that emotion. As tempting as it was to give in and start shouting at this weird Clarke person for blowing the cover she’d carefully cultivated, that would only acknowledge that there had been a cover _to_ blow. She took a deep breath and said, in her most bored tone, “Who’s probably on their way?”

“The Weathermen.”

The laugh escaped before she could stop it, making Clarke frown. “I’m sorry,” Raven said in an uncharacteristic burst of charity, though she had to push the side of her fist against her mouth to stop any further giggles. “A team of meteorologists is on their way to my lab because they think I have some special ability that I really don’t?”

“Trust me, I wish they were meteorologists. The name comes from—”

The proximity alarms all activated at once. It wasn’t audible: everything in Raven’s vision simply turned briefly, dizzyingly purple. She spun, already digging into the video streams. Her brain effortlessly translated the binary back into images and when it occurred to her that the images were from her front stoop and not a TV show, she cursed.

“What is it?” Clarke was already on her feet by the stairs, fists clenched.

“Any chance these meteorologists of yours wear gas masks and look kind of like Nazis?”

“Shit,” Clarke said. “How do you know that?”

“They’re outside, and they’re about to come in.” Raven thought a command at her brace and started running—not for the door, but for the closet she’d hidden behind a hologram. She waved a hand to dismiss the image.

The exoskeleton suit was already lit and cracked open, waiting for her.

“Oh,” Clarke said. “That’s not for boxing.”

“Nope.” Raven disengaged the brace and hopped the remaining two steps to the exo. Her fighting exo, modded to be unremarkable in areas like the Factory, had nothing on this armor. It was slim, built for speed and reflexivity rather than raw brutality, though she packed enough firepower to level a city block. But hey, she liked to tell herself she was kind of a pacifist at heart, so she pretty much hoped to never use that.

“There’s no output screen,” Clarke said as the helmet came down over Raven’s head.

“Don’t need one.” Raven rolled her shoulders, feeling the suit settle and shift into place around her. She scooped up the brace, locked in into the holster on her back, and gave her lab one last look, heart pounding. In a cold moment of insight, she realized: she was never going to see this dump again. She gritted her teeth and sent a command to every single computer in the place. At once, it all began to smoke, making Clarke jump. “They’ve got us surrounded on all sides but one.”

“Which one is that? I can probably get us both out of here if that suit’s not as heavy as it looks.” Clarke dropped into a racing stance, a determined look on her face.

But Raven was too busy focusing on the video feed from outside. She would cry over her babies later. The men with their gas masks and their bulky uniforms had crept up to every known exit, strange-looking guns at the ready as they moved along. Raven imagined they thought they were being stealthy, but she’d outfitted her lab with more cameras than a Monday night football broadcast. There was absolutely no way anybody was sneaking up on her. And there was only one way out.

“Hop on,” she said.

“What?” Clarke asked.

Raven turned her back to her temporary ally. “Hop on,” she said again, “and consider yourself lucky that I’m not abandoning your white ass after you gave up my location to creepy face-masked dudes.”

“Like a piggy-back ride?”

“Might want to hurry before they get here and we die.”

In a blink, Clarke was on her back, fingers digging into the shoulders of Raven’s armor. Raven took three running steps—and launched them both. Her stomach dropped as the boosters took hold, rocketing them toward the ceiling. She twisted in midair, fist up, and rammed straight through the skylight.

She felt a gust of cold air against her face, right as her sensors chimed an alert. A split-second after they’d exploded into the night air, gunfire boomed, a little too close to her head for comfort.

The Weathermen were on the roof, too.

“Shit!” She went into evasive maneuvers, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do with a virtual stranger clinging to her back. Three masked figures on her roof, one on her neighbor’s, all of them armed and racing across the graveled roof to _her_ lab like they owned the place. The guns didn’t look like some kind of futuristic model meant to take down Naturals, but that didn’t mean they weren’t pretty damned lethal.

“What the _hell_? How did they get up here so fast?” Raven swooped to avoid a spate of bullets, nearly scraping her breastplate against the stones. She heard Clarke yelp as she shot straight up into the air. “You have to give them points for enthusiasm, but geez.”

“Can you get us out of here?” Clarke asked.

Raven rolled and fired an energy blast from one of her arm cannons. “Not with Skippy up there,” she said, indicating the goon on her neighbor’s roof. It was several stories taller than hers, giving him a clear shot on any escape route she could possibly take.

“Can you take him out?”

Raven twisted and fired at two of the morons on her roof, both of whom scrambled for cover. “Maybe,” she said, filing away the data her sensors were feeding her. More Weathermen climbing the roof at a startling rate. What the hell were they? Ninjas? “But I’m not equipped to take down the three yahoos down here at the same time.”

“Fly low. I’ve got them, you take out that guy on the roof.”

“Better plan: I drop you, fly to Tahiti, and enjoy daiquiris on the beach while you stay here and suffer for dragging me into this.”

The last thing she expected was for the blonde clutching onto her armor to start laughing. “We’re going to be such good friends,” Clarke said—and jumped.

Without the speedster’s weight (what the hell did she even eat? Dark matter?), Raven’s speed tripled. She rolled in midair, kicked on her aux boosters, and flew straight for the nearest window on the top floor of her neighbor’s penthouse apartment. “Sorry, Joneses,” she said, and hit the glass as hard as she could.

Shrieking erupted as she burst into her neighbor’s super-fancy apartment. Raven caught impressions of expensive artwork, all white furniture, and way too much privilege as she sped through—before she exploded through the skylight in the bathroom and out onto the rooftop.

Her energy blast caught the sniper right between the shoulder-blades as he turned.

“Sucker,” Raven said as the man dropped. Every single one of her systems chirped a warning as more gunfire sounded, imploring her to vacate the area immediately, to get to safety. For a second, she was tempted to listen. Creepy Weathermen in masks attacking with guns, that was _definitely_ not her milieu. She was a mechanic. A damned good one.

And a Natural.

And if the Naturals had escaped like Clarke said they had, if they were out there…

“Damn it,” Raven said, taking a running leap off the side of the building. She’d never been a team player before, but it looked like that was about to change.

In the brief second before gravity truly grabbed hold, she let the data flow in, mapping out the fight still going on over on her roof. It was impressive to watch Clarke Griffin work, precisely because you couldn’t _see_ Clarke Griffin work. And neither could the Weathermen. They spun in circles, shooting at empty air while the occasional blue streak, like static electricity, shot by. Raven’s sensors picked up _something_ , but it vanished just as quickly as it appeared. Anomaly readings began to overwhelm the helpful information.

Raven kicked on her boosters right as the first Weatherman went down. One second, he fired in a semi-circle, gun nozzle nothing but a bright flash. The next, he lay on the ground, gun beside him and mask askew. A half-second later, the next fighter screamed as he was tossed over the side of the building. His fellows that were climbing attempted to catch him, but Raven had to look away before he hit the pavement. She took aim at the third, intending to help out.

The energy blast caught something else entirely. For an instant, it was like the ball of blue light caught empty air, but Clarke flickered back into existence ten feet away, face contorted in pain as she clutched her left shoulder. She hit the gravel with a _thud_.

Both Raven and the remaining Weatherman gaped. He swiveled his mask toward her.

“Hey, that was an accident,” Raven said, raising her hands. “Obviously. I might not know her that well, but—wait, what the hell am I telling you this for?”

She shot him with the same voltage that had maybe just killed Clarke. He tumbled like a set-piece in a Kaiju movie right as Raven’s sensors warned her she had less than twenty seconds before the next wave of creepy dudes in masks came over the side of the building.

“Mama just wanted a new compressor. Was that too much to ask?” Raven said to herself as she scooped up Clarke, tossed her over her shoulder, and launched herself away from trouble. Of course, if she had to guess, the blonde she’d just shot and subsequently saved was way more trouble than all of these weirdo meteorologists combined.

* * *

Clarke’s chest and shoulder hurt.

Great. She must have been sparring with Octavia again, even though she knew better by this point. Octavia might be the only one who could hold her own against Clarke, and if they didn’t practice, they would both get rusty. But Octavia’s talent wasn’t to fight, it was to incapacitate, and far too many sparring matches ended this way.

She really had to knock that off, Clarke thought. 

“Your talent might run out, Clarke.” She could still hear her mother’s words, sense the outright fear in them, feel Abby’s fingers cold against her cheek as her mother fought the guards for just one more minute, one last encounter with her freak daughter. “Don’t push it—stay safe—protect yourself.”

Years later, Clarke apparently wasn’t going to listen to a damned word of it. She healed—for now, which was all that mattered. If circumstances changed, she would worry about them later. Right now, she and Bellamy had to do everything they could to keep their people alive.

But still, no more sparring with Octavia. Not when it hurt this much.

Clarke groaned and tried to settle into a new, more comfortable position. The light was red against the insides of her eyelids. If she’d been sparring, that meant she was now in the infirmary. Though if this was the infirmary, why was it so bright? 

Clarke opened her eyes to sunlight.

“Good morning,” said an unfamiliar voice.

Clarke blinked at the canopy of trees over her head, the dappled light playing among the green, and then at the woman sitting across from her. Raven, her brain informed her. The woman she’d gone to recruit in Ark City. Why was she here, in the forest? A glance down told Clarke she was propped up against a moss-covered boulder. She’d been stripped to her tank-top, there was a shirt tied around her shoulder, and her jacket and a second red coat had been spread over her like blankets.

Empty exoskeleton armor sat next to Raven, posed like the Thinker. It was a little eerie, so Clarke decided to focus on Raven instead.

“Where am I?” Clarke asked.

“Not far from your secret base. I didn’t want go in while you were unconscious, what with it being a building full of super-powered—hey, don’t mess with my handiwork.” Raven pushed Clarke’s hand away when she reached for the bandage on her shoulder. “I’m no Florence Nightingale to start and I barely got that to stay. Leave it be.”

“Wh-what happened?”

Raven passed over a flask, which Clarke took gratefully with her good hand. Healing was always thirsty business. “Meteorologists. You got caught in the crossfire.”

Meteorologists? She must mean the Weathermen, but how did she know about—details came flooding back through the ache and the fog. She’d gone to the exo boxing match to see if Monty’s suspicions about Raven Reyes were correct. The Mount Weather team must have already been onto Raven’s identity already, to arrive so quickly after her. But even they could have no idea about the depths of Raven’s abilities.

The woman had built a flying, weaponized exoskeleton that needed no user interface. Raven _was_ the interface.

And also either a terrible or a lucky shot, given just how much Clarke’s shoulder hurt.

Clarke handed the flask back with a couple of swallows left. She wanted to stretch, as sleeping in the forest had left her entire body stiff and her joints locked up, a sensation she hated above all else. She wanted to be free to _move_. But she had a strong suspicion that if she moved too much, her shoulder would protest. “What happened to Tahiti?”

“Still there.” Raven shrugged. “I’ll go later.”

“Later?”

“After.” Raven pulled something out of her pocket and rolled it through her fingers. Clarke squinted until she recognized the gaming chit the other woman had been granted at the fight the night before. The mechanic’s voice was light as she said, “Not like I can go back to Ark City at the moment, so I thought I’d check out whatever setup you, uh, you Naturals have. I’ll hold Tahiti in reserve, of course.”

“Of course.” Clarke finally sat up and finger-combed her hair back from her face. “Did you hack my phone to find where the base was?”

Raven snorted. “Hack,” she said. “Aren’t you cute.”

“Yeah, I guess hacking’s a pretty rudimentary, considering what you do to computers. How’d that happen?”

Raven paused. She still wasn’t ready to confess, Clarke thought. Of course, after years of hiding a secret as big as hers, Clarke figured it had to be difficult to even begin to think of telling another soul. “How’d yours happen?” Raven said instead of answering.

Clarke groped for the shirt-bandage around her shoulder, wincing as that sent little licks of agony from her breastbone to her elbow. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as the memories that crossed her mind now, though. Natural abilities all came about the same way, as far as they’d determined. Hers had just been a little more tragic. “Just like everybody else. I fell. I was visiting my dad at work—he was an engineer working on a dam not far from our house for once, so it was neat to see his worksite. Somebody didn’t post the right safety regulation signs, Dad couldn’t catch me in time, and…”

“You woke up after and things were different?”

“The world felt slow,” Clarke said. “No, not slow. Stuck. It takes forever for something to happen, like time’s broken or something, and when I woke up in the hospital, all I could think is ‘why is this taking forever?’” And then they’d told her about her father, and she’d wished time would stop altogether.

She twisted her watch so that the face rested against the inside of her wrist. “Your turn,” she said.

“Guess there’s no point in trying to hide it anymore, is there? For me, it was a hole in the apartment floor.” Raven twisted, pulling her shirt up to expose her lower back. There against the smooth skin were three white scars about as long as Clarke’s pinky. “Fall should’ve killed me. Instead, I’ll walk with a limp for the rest of my life.”

“Honestly, that’s probably what saved you from the Skylab. Naturals wake up healed of every sickness and injury we’ve ever suffered. They would never suspect one of us having a limp.” 

“Lucky me,” Raven said, flipping the chit and catching it easily.

“I’m just glad we’re past the denial stage, personally.” Clarke untangled the bandage from her arm and pulled it free. The skin underneath was an angry red, but the burns had already begun to heal. The stickiness, however, surprised her, as did the smell of burn cream. “You’ve got a medkit in that thing?”

“It’s a flying exo designed for combat. Duh. What’s the Skylab?”

“Where they kept us at first.” Clarke pushed away all memories of waking up in that white room for the first time, looking at Starry Night on the wall and panicking. “Let’s walk and talk. If we’re where I think we are, the base isn’t far.”

“Yeah, I parked us just outside your scanners,” Raven said. She climbed to her feet and, as Clarke watched, removed the brace once again from her left leg. This time, though, she hooked it to the back of the armor before she hopped over and climbed inside. Clarke watched her take a deep breath of relief the minute the exo encased her, and she understood exactly how that felt.

Heaven knew she felt nothing but relief whenever she was finally allowed to go _fast_.

Clarke pulled on her own jacket and draped Raven’s over her good shoulder since the other woman had neglected to put it back on. As far as she could tell, it was just after dawn, which had given Raven a little over six hours of time to think over everything. No doubt she would have picked up on how many resources the Weathermen had had, how easily it would be to find them. But Raven didn’t know if she could trust the others yet, and Clarke more than understood that. That distrust of each other had nearly ripped them apart in the beginning. And letting Raven know how much they needed somebody like her, somebody with her abilities, might not be the best opening play.

So as they walked, Clarke started at the beginning, telling their story. It distracted her from the ache in her shoulder as they walked. Some of the story, she was sure Raven knew. The media had covered the discovery of supernatural teens extensively; Jasper’s face had been all over the news for months. But the media had never covered the darker parts of the tale. Not a word had been said about how every Natural had been rounded up, put under a microscope, studied day in and day out in all situations: hungry, exhausted, deprived of sunlight and sleep, tucked into rooms so small that they had no choice but to stand. Their powers, their bodies, their minds had all been pushed to the breaking point. The never-ending drugs, the tests, and the lights.

“Can’t say I’m sorry I missed out on all that,” Raven said. “How’d you get out?”

“They underestimated us.” Clarke hesitated, looking at the space to her left. Technically, what had happened wasn’t her secret to tell, but…Raven was a Natural. She was one of them now. “We had some motivation. There’s one of us, her power doesn’t sound remarkable, but she has the ability to incapacitate _anything_. Other people. Machines. I saw her take down a tank once. Whatever her foe is, her power is to understand it and to come up with a way to take it down. The people holding us were only going to last so long before her power kicked in anyway. Plus her brother sped things up, too.”

“Can he incapacitate things like she can?”

“No, he’s a telempath—I mean, he projects emotions, sometimes without meaning to.”

“That could get embarrassing quickly,” Raven said, and despite the seriousness of the subject, Clarke had to bite down hard on her bottom lip to keep from laughing. They’d discovered that particular little drawback for themselves after one of Bellamy’s sex dreams. He still wouldn’t say who the other participant was, but everybody in the base had been a bit…frisky for days after that. “What? I’m just saying.”

“Either way, he wanted his sister safe, so he made sure we were all motivated. We escaped,” Clarke said. “And one of our number…he sacrificed himself so we could get away.”

Raven shot her a swift look. “Metal worker?”

“Yeah—how’d you know?”

But apparently Raven was done spilling any secrets she’d ever had. “I don’t want to talk about it. So you’re out, on the run from the Skylab folks and…now what?”

“We’ve got much bigger problems to worry about than the Skylab,” Clarke said.

“See, when you say things like that, it’s making me wonder if I should regret you randomly showing up last night,” Raven said, glancing toward the sky like she might simply fly away.

Clarke wouldn’t blame her. If there had been a way to keep Naturals entirely off the radar, Clarke would be the first person advocating for it. There wasn’t a morning she didn’t wake up with her nightmares an after-image against her eyelids, wishing things could have been different. She wouldn’t give her powers for the world, but for that space between one heartbeat and the next right after she woke, she wanted to be that far-too-serious teenager in all of the AP classes once again.

Or really, she wanted to be safe, which was not something she would be for the rest of her life.

“If it makes you feel better,” Clarke said, “the Weathermen were already onto you, I think. It’s the only way they could have showed up that fast.”

Raven grimaced. “Great. And what would have happened if you hadn’t been there? I mean, provided I hadn’t kicked all the ass anyway.”

“You don’t want to know,” Clarke said.

When she didn’t continue talking, her new companion gave her a long look. “Why?”

Instead of answering, though, Clarke put out a hand to stop Raven in her tracks. “Wait,” she said, cocking her head as she studied the path around them. “Something’s different. The traps have moved.”

“Traps?” She heard the whirr of Raven’s suit. “I’m not picking up any technology in the area.”

“Old school. They’re more effective than you would think.” Clarke kept her hand up to forestall Raven from moving even as she crouched. She squinted. Tracking wasn’t her best subject and she was still groggy from the hit she’d taken, but she was sure… “Whatever you do, don’t move, okay?”

“Why?”

“I just want to check something.” Clarke took a deep breath, concentrated, and rocketed into motion. Time shifted as her brain switched over, finally freed from the slow stupor of everyday life. She raced forward, checking the old trap location and finding absolutely nothing there. Great. Octavia must have felt she had the potential to bring back either Grounders or Weathermen. Still in her time-stop-motion state, Clarke looked around for any signs of disturbed earth, though she knew she wouldn’t find any.

She was going to have a long talk with Octavia about this.

Clarke phased back to “normal” time, appearing on Raven’s other side and making her jump. “Bad news: O reset the traps, which means it’s not safe to walk from here to camp. I can run because I’m too fast to trigger any of them, but you…”

“I have the coordinates,” Raven said. “Your network security is—well, it’s better than I expected, but still a bit like shredding wet tissue. I’ll fly and meet you there?”

“Stay near the top of the tree-line, if you can.” It wasn’t her ideal situation. Clarke would have preferred more time to explain things to Raven before they arrived at camp and were surrounded by dozens of other empowered teenagers. But life had made Clarke a pragmatist, and she didn’t think Raven was exactly the type to sell them out. “See you there?”

A tinted visor snapped into place over Raven’s eyes. “I’d say ‘race you,’ but I don’t bet against the house.”

Clarke let out a genuine laugh as she took off running, the first one in what felt like forever.

* * *

The coordinates led to a cliff. Not just a cliff, but one with a drop so sheer that Raven half-expected to see a pile of mangled skeletons at the bottom as a warning for anybody who dared try to enter the Naturals’ camp. Raven hovered in midair a couple hundred feet away, running a deep scan of what she could see. She’d been tempted to check it out the night before, in those long interminable hours that Clarke slept off the effects of being shot. But nothing could change the fact that this was a camp full of people with extra-natural abilities, and she had no idea what she would face. There might, for example, be some pimply kid who looked totally benign but could actually shoot missiles at you with the power of his mind.

Or maybe not. She’d never dared even so much as run a web search on Naturals, not after they’d taken Finn. But they’d found her anyway. Or rather, Clarke had. Who knew that Speedy Gonzalez was actually a teenager with seriously sad eyes? Less than twelve hours, and Raven’s knowledge of the strange abilities she’d been given had more than quadrupled. And here she was, hovering outside of their base, about to be accepted as one of them.

The readings from her scan poured into her brain, and it took Raven a full minute to realize that they were not a glitch in the Matrix and that, no, her brain was seeing exactly what it thought it was seeing.

They’d stuffed a plane into a cliff. 

A friggin’ 747.

Into the side of a cliff. Straight in, deep within the rock, not a single stone disturbed.

Except that a stone _was_ disturbed, for right in the middle of the rock face, a small hatch slid open. Clarke’s sunny hair was easy to make out in this distance. She waved, and Raven warily flew closer. “Gonna stay out there all day?” the Natural asked.

“Can you blame me?” Raven disengaged her boosters and sailed effortlessly into the opening. She landed next to Clarke. The suit whirred as the stabilizers retreated into their holders. “Wasn’t sure what the etiquette is when your front door is in the middle of fucking terror-land.”

“Knocking’s pretty universal. Let me give you a tour.”

A tour was actually a little pointless, as Raven’s scan had returned an entire set of blueprints for the 747 buried deep into the mountain, but she didn’t mention that. She followed Clarke down a short, dark hallway, her boots clanging against metal-reinforced floors. The corridor was shorter than it appeared, leading to a heavy metal door, one that had obviously been lifted from a bank vault. Clarke’s fingers went blurry as she spun in the combination, preventing Raven from discovering the numbers. It took both Raven and Clarke to pull the door open fully.

“We call it,” Clarke said as Raven cautiously stepped through, “the Dropship.”

The vault door revealed the main body of the plane, which had apparently been converted into some kind of rec room. All activity inside the room stopped. There were various people—kids, really, teenagers like her—reclining on plane seats, most of which had been ripped out and grouped together around low tables. Instantly, Raven’s skin crawled beneath her under-armor. Something just felt _off_. After a second, she realized that it was because one kid’s head was actively on fire (she didn’t seem bothered) and the poker game in the corner, otherwise unremarkable, gave her the creeps because the cards were hovering in the air in front of the participants. 

“If the underground plane didn’t give it away,” Raven said to Clarke in an undertone, “that little card trick would make it clear we’re definitely not in the wrong place.” 

“It’s a little disconcerting, isn’t it?” Clarke twitched a shoulder—what can you do?—and addressed the room at large. “Everybody, this is Raven. She’s one of us.” 

Like the tricked-out exo didn’t give her away. She felt like she was in one of those AA meetings. _Hi, my name is Raven and I can interface with machines. Hi, Raven._ Perturbed, she gave them a little wave. 

“Where’s Bellamy?” Clarke asked, apparently skipping the ‘introducing everybody else’ portion of the day. 

“War room,” one of the card-players said. “He said the council meeting’s starting soon to go retrieve you, so you should probably, I don’t know, put in an appearance.”

“Thanks, as ever, Murphy,” Clarke said, rolling her eyes. She turned to Raven, jerking her head to indicate Raven should follow. They crossed through the rec room together, and Raven actively tried not to think about the stares she was drawing. “Corridor to the war room’s kind of a tight fight. I’ll show you your cabin so you can drop the suit. We don’t have a lab built for you yet. I’m sorry—we had to move fast to get to you, which was why they sent me.”

“But you’ve got a cabin all ready for me to go?” Raven shook her head, finally letting the full absurdity of the situation get to her. “Last night I shot you. Weathermen swarmed my place all over within minutes of you arriving. Now you’re letting me in here, knowing I can manipulate any tech within range. How exactly does this lead to trusting me again?”

“Sterling scanned you a minute ago,” Clarke said without looking back. “He can read people’s motives. If you’d been with the Weathermen or one of our other enemies—”

“You have a mind-reader?” Raven put her hand to her forehead, anger beginning to swirl.

“Sterling’s more of a motive-reader. He can tell when somebody means us harm.” Clarke didn’t seem at all bothered that she and her friends had violated Raven’s privacy on every level. She looked back over her shoulder now, eyebrow raised. “He doesn’t know what you’re thinking. We have rules about that kind of thing.”

“And do you follow them?”

“We try.” As they walked through twisted corridors, Raven could see more of the plane, which had helpful signs posted on the bulkheads. First Class had become a kitchen, a room had been carved out over the wing that served as an infirmary. All over, Raven could see various touches from the plane, reused in ways she never would have thought about doing herself. “Look, we’re a bunch of half-grown teenagers who got superpowers instead of dying. We all heal quickly, we’re damn near invincible, and we’ve got half the world after us. Things get tense sometimes. We have to use every advantage.”

“And that’s what I am to you? An advantage?”

“Yes,” Clarke said. She rested a hand against the door labeled 102 and pushed it open. “We need somebody with an analytical mind, somebody that can see things objectively—and even better, approach a problem with the mindset of fixing it rather than avoiding it. You’re not a Grounder because you’re too young to be special forces, you’re not a Skylab scientist, and you definitely didn’t come from Mount Weather.”

Raven stepped inside and found a small room that held a sink, a bed with a set of folded sheets and a pillow resting atop it. Shelves had been carved into the stone walls and a single light lit the space. As much as she didn’t want to abandon the suit, the solar charge hadn’t been enough to replenish the depleted battery stores from the earlier flight. She would configure a charging station later, if they let her. “How do you know I don’t come from Mount Weather?” she asked as she pulled her brace back on. 

“You’re not a doomsday prepper, for one thing.”

“That explains the creepy masks,” Raven said. “What do they want with you guys—or, well, I should say, with us since I’m now Team Natural?”

Clarke folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the door frame, looking into space for a long time, so long that the hair began to crawl on the back of Raven’s neck. When the blonde spoke, her voice was serious. “And the fifth angel sounded,” she said, “and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit—”

“Wait,” Raven said, holding up a hand as alarm spread through her. “Wait just a second. Are you quoting the friggin’ Bible at me? That’s some Old Testament shit. I didn’t sign up for this!”

“New Testament, actually. Revelation.” Clarke shook her head. “We get our powers when we fall. Every single one of us, every single fall should have killed us, and it didn’t. We lived, and we’re all more than human, and despite our highly ironic name, that’s just not natural.”

“So these Weathermen believe we’re, what? The Antichrist?”

“Didn’t you hear? We’re the Fallen. We’re the first step to the end of the world.”

Raven’s stomach dropped unpleasantly, landing somewhere around her knees and staying put. “You’re not serious,” she said.

Clarke just looked at her soberly.

“Are you?” Raven asked.

Finally, _finally_ Clarke grinned. “Of course not. I’m just telling you what they believe. We here at the Dropship know better. We’re just a random group of a hundred and two kids who ended up with weird superpowers.” She gripped Raven’s shoulder and squeezed, her smile only broadening. “But now you feel better that we don’t think you’re a Weatherman, right?”

“You’re twisted,” Raven said.

“Probably.” Clarke turned and started walking, so Raven had no choice but to follow her again, back into the main belly of the plane. “I think you’ll fit right in, and I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said we needed you. Bellamy’s kind of a lousy intercom system for everybody. Think you can build us a radio?”

“Ah, now I see why you wanted me around. Just exactly how much danger am I getting into, associating with you?”

Clarke shrugged. “Other than the creepy, end-of-days-obsessed and armed-to-the-teeth cult hell-bent on tracking down our every movement? There’s also the Army Ground Force, who views us as dangerous and is actively hunting us. And don’t forget the Skylab scientists we escaped. So that’s the private sector, the government, and the religious nuts that want a piece of us.”

“You’re just making friends all over the place,” Raven said, her voice completely dry.

“Yeah, but you’re better with us than you would be out there. We’re charming like that. So.” Clarke straightened up and twisted, popping every bone in her spine and making Raven wince. She bounced from foot to foot, never really still, and Raven had a sudden vision of what life was probably going to be like as Clarke Griffin’s friend: it would never stop moving. “Ready to meet some other superheroes?”

“I guess if I have to,” Raven said, giving such a put-upon sigh that Clarke went briefly still, looking stricken. “I’m kidding. Of course I want to join your wacky team.”

Instantly, relief crossed Clarke’s face, and she laughed, punching Raven lightly in the arm. “Funny,” she said.

“Turnabout’s fair play. Though pro-tip: You’ll never be subtle, by the way. I’ve been meaning to tell you that since last night. So maybe don’t play poker.”

“Why do I need to be good at poker when I’m fast enough to look at everybody’s cards before they realize?” Clarke shook her head as she led Raven out of the room. “You really need to get used to being around other superheroes.”

“Looks like we’re about to fix that.” And thus, her fate sealed, Raven followed her new friend to the war room to meet the others. 


	2. Alternate Ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised to post this months and months ago. Uh, like half a year ago now. Here it is: your very short alternate ending where Raven meets the team. And their powers.

“About time you two decided to show up,” said a new voice, and Raven swiveled to see a woman who wore two swords strapped to her back. She’d braided one lock of hair so that it traced the contour of her skull. Raven needed only one glance at her, at the way the woman regarded her, to figure out this was the one who could overcome any challenge. “Hi. Octavia Blake. Welcome to the Dropship.”

“Raven. Reyes. Happy to be here, sort of,” Raven said, shaking the proffered hand. She wanted to ask what was up with the swords, but she bit her tongue.

Octavia looked at Clarke. “Bell’s talking about dragging out the big guns to get you back. You should probably get to the war room and let him know you’re not dead.”

“We’re on the way to do that,” Clarke said.

Bell must be the Bellamy that Clarke had mentioned. The telempath, which Raven was not looking forward to experiencing. They headed down to the cargo hold for the plane, climbing out the door where the drink carts and food were typically loaded. Clarke led the way down a steep set, winding set of stairs. It wasn’t the easiest path to maneuver, even with her enhanced brace, but Raven just gritted her teeth and soldiered on. 

Even so, Clarke glanced back at her and frowned. “We’ll get our rocksmith to even it out a bit,” she said.

“No need to go through all that for little old me.”

“You’re one of us now,” Clarke said, like it was that simple.

And maybe it was.

When they reached a door, Clarke rapped three times. “Might as well meet everybody in one go.”

The door was opened by a reedy-looking kid that Raven recognized from the initial media firestorm about the Naturals. He wore a pair of goggles that shaded his eyes even though it as considerably dimmer in the council chamber. “Ladies,” he said. He gave Raven a big smile. “Hi! Jasper Jordan. Always nice to have a fresh face around. Welcome to the war room.”

“Raven,” Raven said, giving him a nod as she followed him inside.

Inside, the room was larger than it appeared. A giant circular table had been wrestled into the middle, with several strangers seated in various chairs. Torches dotted the alcoves lining the walls. Blueprints had been tacked to boards—a long term siege? A heist? Raven covertly had her wrist unit scan the nearest one and it returned a detailed schematic of an army base. 

She pulled up short when she saw the opposite wall.

Seven mannequins stood, all wearing what looked like old-fashioned comic book superhero outfits. The fabric popped, the colors almost blinding to the eye, but even the brightness couldn’t entirely hide the sewn-in armor into them. Raven scanned each costume in turn with her wrist unit, mentally readjusting her hypothesis when the readings came back. These suits were armored, yes, but they’d also been enhanced. The blue suit, slightly smaller than the rest, had been made of a friction-resistant material. The green suit was incredibly porous, the brown suit had built-in goggles, and the black suit had a metal collar that could be extended over the head into a metal cap.

In front of them stood a man in an ancient blue-gray T-shirt, his arms crossed over his chest. Raven felt an unexplained quick burst of happiness when he straightened up and spotted Clarke, but the feeling was there and gone just like that. “Princess,” he said, his voice neutral. “Nice of you to join us.”

Clarke blinked in and out of existence, appearing in one of the chairs at the table with her boots propped on the table. “We ran into Weathermen ,” she said, “and it turns out Raven’s pretty good in a fight. Raven, this is Bellamy. That’s Monty—”

“Hi,” said a smiling kid at the table, raising a hand and giving her a little wave. He had dirt in his fingernails and a flask in his shirt pocket. “Plants and some computers. Also libations.”

“—and you met Jasper—”

“Recon and precision, at your service,” Jasper said, sketching her a deep bow as he took a seat. 

“—and finally we have Miller.” Clarke nodded at the last person at the table.

“What do you do?” Raven asked when he waved.

In response, he smiled, raised a hand palm-up, and a miniature globe of bright green fire appeared right above his palm. “Pyrotechnics, mostly, though I also make a mean soufflé.”

“Do those suits mean what I think they do?” Raven asked, stepping closer to the blue suit, which had eyeholes and the chin and mouth exposed. She touched the fabric at the shoulder. 

Clarke nodded, just the once. “We got a little tired of being lab rats,” she said. “We thought superheroes had a much better ring to it, but we realized early on if we were going to organize a staged offensive against our enemies, we needed a way to communicate. We found you just in time.”

“So you didn’t come find me just because I’m a Natural. You came and got me because you’re all lunatics that want to do what? Fight crime in goofy costumes?”

“We were going to start small and fight back against the Weathermen first,” Bellamy said, his voice wry.

“In shiny outfits?”

“My idea,” Jasper said. “We’ve already got the superpowers. This was the logical next step.”

“I wanted something a little less colorful, for the record,” Octavia said as she perched cross-legged in one of the chairs. 

“Do I have a goofy costume of my own, then?” Raven asked, dropping into a chair at the table since her leg was beginning to hurt.

“You already do,” Clarke said, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh. Huh. Then I guess I’m in.” Raven raised her eyebrow right back. Blondie wasn’t the only one who could do that. “What do we get to blow up first?”

There was a long pause as the others looked around at each other. Jasper was the first to break: he started to smile very slowly, his eyes never focusing on her. “You’re going to fit right in.”

**Author's Note:**

> Clarke quotes Revelation 9:1-2 to Raven, King James version. The full version: _And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit._


End file.
